These problems grew, the group said, after Israel tightened its borders in March following four suicide attacks that left 58 Israelis dead and another 200 wounded.

The trauma of the attacks -- some of the the worst ever -- has yet to fade for many Israelis.

For the Palestinians, the closure is costing more than $6 million a day in losses due to the cutback of Arab workers in Israel, shipping difficulties, and Arab firms' inabilities to meet business promises, according to the report.

"Lifting the closure is not the solution. The issue is imposing it again when there is another security problem," said Fatemeh Ziai, a Washington-based attorney for the human-rights group.

As Palestinians struggled with the closure, they faced another problem: Israeli settlers said Sunday they wanted to triple their numbers in the next four years by building eight new settlements and expanding existing ones. Opponents said those moves could threaten the peace process.

Within Israel, the closure has been a matter of debate among Israelis who weigh their own heightened fears of attacks against the likelihood of worsening relations with the Palestinians.

A report issued last week by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, an Israeli human-rights organization, pointed out that the latest closure has "brought hardship to a large number of innocent people."

Before his recent trip to the U.S., Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated he was aware of the economic hardships faced by the Palestinians because of the closure, and he suggested he might moderate the order.

Yet Netanyahu did not announce any changes in the closure during his trip, prompting frustration among Palestinians.

"We have to remember that after the first suicide bomber (in February), we enforced a closure, and it didn't work. So then we had to put a very serious closure," said Shlomo Dror, spokesman for an Israeli office that deals with the West Bank and Gaza.

"If we can have good security here, then we can bring people back to work," he said, noting that one of the suicide bombers entered Israel among the daily workers.

Before the latest closure about 60,000 workers had permits to work in Israel, and an estimated 20,000 did so illegally. Most of their jobs have been filled by foreign workers. When the closure is lifted, "the situation is unlikely to be the way it used to be," Dror added.